A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Prevalence of spelling errors affects reading behavior across languages.
Authors: Kuperman Victor; Bar-On Amalia Bertram Raymond, Boshra Rober, Deutsch Avital, Kyröläinen Aki-Juhani, Mathiopoulou Varvara, Oralova Gaisha, Protopapas Athanassios
Publisher: American Psychological Association
Publishing place: Washington, DC
Publication year: 2021
Journal: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Journal name in source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
ISSN: 0096-3445
eISSN: 1939-2222
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001038(external)
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/86240(external)
Abstract
This cross-linguistic study investigated the impact of spelling errors on reading behavior infive languages (Chinese, English, Finnish, Greek, and Hebrew). Learning theories predict that correct and
incorrect spelling alternatives (e.g., *tomorrow”and“tommorrow”) provide competing cues to the sound and
meaning of a word: The closer the alternatives are to each other in their frequency of occurrence, themore uncertain the reader is regarding the spelling of that word. An information-theoretic measure ofentropy was used as an index of uncertainty. Based on theories of learning, we predicted that higher en-tropy would lead to slower recognition of words even when they are spelled correctly. This predictionwas confirmed in eye-tracking sentence-reading experiments infive languages widely variable in their
writing systems’phonology and morphology. Moreover, in each language, we observed a characteristic
Entropy3Frequency interaction; arguably, its functional shape varied as a function of the orthographic transparency of a given written language.
This cross-linguistic study investigated the impact of spelling errors on reading behavior infive languages (Chinese, English, Finnish, Greek, and Hebrew). Learning theories predict that correct and
incorrect spelling alternatives (e.g., *tomorrow”and“tommorrow”) provide competing cues to the sound and
meaning of a word: The closer the alternatives are to each other in their frequency of occurrence, themore uncertain the reader is regarding the spelling of that word. An information-theoretic measure ofentropy was used as an index of uncertainty. Based on theories of learning, we predicted that higher en-tropy would lead to slower recognition of words even when they are spelled correctly. This predictionwas confirmed in eye-tracking sentence-reading experiments infive languages widely variable in their
writing systems’phonology and morphology. Moreover, in each language, we observed a characteristic
Entropy3Frequency interaction; arguably, its functional shape varied as a function of the orthographic transparency of a given written language.
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